Tilt: Every Family Spins on Its Own Axis [Hardcover]

Burns (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2003

Elizabeth Burns crafts a stunning debut novel, filled with luminous, wryly humorous and wrenchingly honest prose.
As a successful young urbanite, Bridget Fox experiences the typical joys and struggles of youthful New Yorkers, and she has happy expectations for her new family. But when her daughter Maeve is diagnosed with autism, Bridget’s life as she knew it and her idealistic images of the perfect family are shattered. She tries to lean on her husband, her father, her best friend, but none can help her reconstruct her world as other tragic challenges begin to surface. But as she tries to choose between insanity and oblivion, Bridget discovers that matters are not nearly so simple-or so hopeless-as she once believed.
Elizabeth Burns weaves the beauty and imagery of her poetic voice into a story of pain, humor, struggle and ultimate redemption. Bravely intimate, astonishing in its honesty, Tilt walks a path that most "normal" novels fear to tread as it follows the journey of a woman desperate enough to fall-and strong enough to survive.
"An inspiring symbol of hope and endurance."-Dan Wakefield, author of New York in the 50s
"This remarkable and poignantly particular first novel finds an ending, but its story will continue for as long as we, any of us, live and breathe."-Robert Creeley, author of Just In Time: Poems 1984–1994

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The things that happen to Bridget Fox in this debut novel could make Job weep, but Bridget is funny on every page, and equally poignant. The overwhelming fact of Bridget's life is that her five-year-old daughter, Maeve, is autistic. Bridget describes what it's like to love a child when "she can't let you know she loves you back." Maeve wears a weighted vest to calm her and alternately giggles and moans to herself. She throws herself against a window and cracks it. This child would be too much for anyone, but Bridget has also suffered grievous losses: she divorced her philandering first husband and weathered the death of her beloved cousin. She and her current husband, Pierce, recently left their longtime home in Manhattan for Minneapolis, where Pierce, an internationally known sculptor, has a teaching job. Bridget has virtually no support system. Her father dies of cancer, her mother is chilly (she tells the desperate Bridget that she needs to find a good rinse for her graying hair). Pierce is soon diagnosed as manic-depressive. It's no wonder that Bridget tilts toward mental breakdown, but it is a wonder that she can be so engaging while coming unhinged-and that Burns manages to stave off melodrama with her dry wit and down-to-earth narration. Burns is a poet whose prose is lyrical, energetic and original. "We have crossed over into some world that I used to imagine was inhabited only by saints and martyrs, by mothers who grow patience like lizards grow tails." This hip and witty novel doesn't mince words about sex, mental illness or the exhaustion of child-rearing.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Burns' first novel tracks Bridget Fox's transformation from carefree, sophisticated New Yorker to depressed Minneapolis wife and mother. Hired as an English tutor by a Portuguese family, Bridget meets talented sculptor Pierce Keller. After a whirlwind courtship, they marry, have two children, and move to Minnesota, where Pierce has landed a job as a college art instructor. In rapid succession, Bridget loses both her best friend and her father to cancer and learns that her oldest child is autistic and her husband is manic-depressive. Bridget then attempts to commit suicide and is hospitalized with severe depression. Two elements keep this novel from dissolving into a complete pity party-- Burns' witty narrator, who proves to be a delightfully amusing guide through this seemingly endless tour of travail, and her memorable portrait of the autistic Maeve, whose behavior is maddening, mysterious, and fascinating. In fact, the too-few scenes between mother and daughter are riveting because they are rendered with such bracing candor. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402200412
• ISBN-13: 978-1402200410
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,606,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful prose launches you into an orbit of dysfunction, March 3, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Tilt: Every Family Spins on Its Own Axis (Hardcover)

Burns' beautiful yet very natural prose brings you on a wild (not in the fun sense) jorney into the life of a woman dealing with a seriously autistic daughter and manic depressive husband. After reading this I will seriously reconsider using the word dysfunctional to describe the average overbearing mother or distant father.

The author beautifully and convincingly tells the story of a dislocated woman -- from a rich and otherwise normal life in NY and Boston to the lonliness of being in the midwest with an uncommunicable child and an unreliable husband, both suffering from mental illness or disability. I won't ruin the story by telling of other tragedies that occur. It is primarily a story of total aloneness without the benefit of reclusion. The main character's life is a whirlwind of despair. At every chapter you can't believe that it will get worse.

When all hope is gone, the story is at is richest in descriptiveness. The reader feels like he is in the room with her, locked in the basement trying to escape her own personal hell which takes place in front of the backdrop of the sunny disposition of midwesters.

I recommend this book to anyone who has dealt with a mentally ill or disabled family member or friend, but also to anyone who just enjoys a "good" story being told through beautiful use of language.

It is hard to describe to people how such an emotionally deep story could also be a "page-turner." Read it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courage, March 6, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Tilt: Every Family Spins on Its Own Axis (Hardcover)

This beautifully written narrative is an absolute must read for anyone who wants to better understand both family life with a child with a disability, and the devastation of mental illness. As the mother of a special needs child, I can attest to the fact that Elizabeth Burns completely captures the roller coaster ride of despair, denial and hope we go through with our "less than typical" children. It often seems there is not enough of the right kind of help for our children and our families, and it is easy to feel the despair that leads the heroine to the depths of depression. The author shows great courage in disclosing what I suspect is some personal experience with the issues in the book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, April 22, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Tilt: Every Family Spins on Its Own Axis (Hardcover)

From reading the other reviews I worried that this book would be one long overwrought melodrama, but luckily the author's voice is honest, wry and familiar. It's like hearing an old friend tell you the unbelievable events that have happened in her life since you last met.

As a special needs mom myself, I can only say, my life looks pretty good compared to Bridget's, and I do find that comforting. Parts of this book moved me to tears, as the author really captures the sometimes terrifying loneliness and numbing exhaustion of coping, day in and day out, with a very different child.